Man has always tried to control his environment. In the last century, man has succeeded in producing totally controlled indoor environments complete with water, light, heating and cooling, sanitary plumbing, and entertainment. We live quite comfortably.
In the last twenty years, the advent of the remote control has further spoiled us. We are disappointed if we cannot point and click to control something. We have separate remote controls for our TVs, stereos, and lights, as well as universal remote controls to permit controlling all these appliances with a single device.
While a remote control can help you navigate a favorites list for TV programming, the favorites list is created through and maintained by the cable or satellite broadcaster, not the remote control. Accordingly, conventional remote controls are limited to assisting a user select content for viewing within the framework already provided by the TV signal broadcaster (e.g. network, cable, satellite, etc). This fact makes the term remote control somewhat misdescriptive since they actually control very little in terms of content. Rather, the conventional remote control merely allows us to select among content that is already chosen for us.
Finally, to the extent that any of our favorite media devices, such as radios, TVs, internet browsers/appliances, etc. permit personalization through favorite lists or user preferences, the information in these devices remain islands unto themselves. Users constantly re-enter favorites and preferences in these devices because it is not currently possible to carry them across devices. Moreover, when a user desires to use a device, such as a TV or web browser on a computer, in a new location such as a hotel room or friend's house, the user no longer has access to their favorites and user preferences which are stored on the same type of device (e.g. TV or web browser) at home.
Accordingly, the personalized use of one electronic device remains isolated and independent of personalized use of other electronic devices available to the user.